The story of Ethel Rosenberg is a sad one. She had the misfortune to join the Young Communists in 1936 where she met Julius Rosenberg who she married. Julius Rosenberg was recruited to spy for the Russian Interior Ministry when Russia was a US ally during WWII. He in turn recruited half a dozen engineers to help him gather information about the American communication and military technology. David Greenglass, Ethel's brother who was working on the Manhattan Project also became involved. Ethel's role was to type up some of the documents that Julius then passed on to the Russians. There was some issue about how many of the secrets actually led Russia to speed up their development of the atomic bomb. When the team got arrested, J. Edgar Hoover included her despite her peripheral involvement as the lever to get Julius to confess. Many luminaries felt her sentence to be unjust including Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso. Protests were held. President Eisenhower let the sentence stand and she and her husband were both executed.
